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Leah Greenberg & Ezra Levin

Co-executive directors, Indivisible

For building the blueprint for the Trump opposition

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Before the raucous town halls, before the crowds at airports protesting the travel ban, before the pink knit caps, before even the inauguration, the organized opposition to Donald Trump’s presidency began in earnest at a gastropub in Austin, Texas. There, one day before Thanksgiving, husband and wife Ezra Levin and Leah Greenberg chatted with a liberal friend whose politics had been jolted by Trump’s victory and wanted to know how to do something about it.

Greenberg and Levin had a good idea of how to channel that “do something” impulse: Both in their early 30s, they had spent much of their adult lives working in politics, including as Democratic congressional aides—Levin for Texas Representative Lloyd Doggett and Greenberg for former Virginia Representative Tom Perriello. The couple had watched with some envy as the Tea Party had managed to transform voters’ feelings into actual results, and they concluded that those successes stemmed from two strategic choices: The Tea Party comprised small, locally focused groups, and it was almost entirely defensive, focusing on pressuring politicians to say “no” to Democratic policies.

From those insights, Greenberg and Levin built the first and still most influential playbook for stonewalling the Trump presidency. Over Thanksgiving break, they drafted a how-to guide for citizens looking for something concrete to do—not so much by rallying or protesting but in ways that might actually affect policy. Greenberg came up with a name for the effort—“Indivisible”—and late on Sunday, November 27, Levin sent a rough draft, in the form of a lengthy Google Doc, to a group of likeminded current and former Hill staffers, asking for their feedback and edits. No detail was too small: There were side-by-side charts telling readers what really influences their members of Congress and what does not (specific requests, yes; laundry lists of concerns about the world, not so much); scripts for phone calls to a congressperson’s office; guidelines for phrasing questions to elected officials at town halls; even advice on where to sit in such forums (“grab seats at the front half of the room,” and spread out to “help reinforce the impression of broad consensus”).

By mid-December, the Indivisible guide was being tweeted out by celebrities and politicos, growing so popular that the Google Doc crashed. Indivisible soon moved to its own website, and as Trump took office, local chapters blossomed—more than 6,000 nationwide. The guidebook has been downloaded more than 2 million times. No district is too red, no Republican official too safe to feel its effects: In February, Indivisible supporters faced down Representative Jason Chaffetz in the Salt Lake City suburbs and Senator Tom Cotton in the GOP redoubt of Springdale, Arkansas—with pointed questions, chants and booing that got national news coverage. Chastened by such high-profile disasters, many Republican House members canceled or no-showed their own public events throughout the spring. Indivisible’s members kept up their pressure. As of August, the Trump administration had yet to pass a single major policy proposal through Congress.

Ben Baker for Politico Magazine

If it all feels like the Tea Party protests from summer 2009, that’s the point. The political mobilization that grew out of those protests helped deliver Republicans the House in 2010. And if Democrats are able to retake the House in 2018, it will be a victory built from Greenberg and Levin’s blueprint—which helped shake many white-collar progressives out of their abstract, coffeehouse-and-protest idealism and reacquaint them with a belief in shoe-leather, show-up-with-bodies democratic politics.

“Bottom line, constituent power works,” Levin says. “Our task now is to ensure people keep building their local groups … so that they can continue changing what’s politically possible at the national level.” —Zack Stanton

Q & A

Twitter: Useful new tool or obnoxious distraction? Who says it can’t be both?

Is Trump draining the swamp? Ha. He’s the crocodile king of the swamp, and we’ve never seen so much muck.

What historical moment does 2017 most resemble? Season 3 of “Game of Thrones,” when King Joffrey really starts coming into his own. Or 1538, after Henry VIII’s third wife but before he executes his chief adviser, Thomas Cromwell.

Illustrations by Joel Kimmel. Lead photo by Ben Baker for Politico Magazine.